Media Literacy As an Educative Tool Against Inequality: The Results of the Programme “Preventing in Madrid”

Most analysis on the effects of Media and new Technologies on children and teenagers focussed either on the social risks (concerning inequality, social stereotypes, violence or substance abuse behaviours that may be increased by the patterns shown by Media) either on the positive opportunities that Media may bring (regarding new chances of learning and development). Based on the integration of both sort of studies, this research underlines the use of Media Literacy as a tool to be used in prevention programmes with children and teenagers, in order both to reduce social risks and to increase opportunities of freedom and equality. As an example, we propose the results of  Preventing in Madrid (University Complutense of Madrid), a prevention programme against violence and social discrimination that has been developed in schools of Madrid since 2002.